The Obelisk Gate

Better than the first book, for its dispensing with narrative trickery and telling a straightforward, engaging story. It takes nearly half the book for Essun's conversation with an old friend to amount to anything, and yet I hardly noticed thanks to smaller discoveries and observations along the way. Castrima is an interesting setting, both physically and socially. Meanwhile we're also introduced to Nassun (who is definitely not her mother), only ten years old and able to be manipulated by powerful forces but at the same time a prodigy of oregeny. Lastly, there is the surprise return of another character who undergoes a transformation, making him both someone we know and someone we don't, but not someone to mistake for an antihero - show more remember the Antarctic orogenes.

The intense ending left a couple of mysteries: Steel = Gray One? What happened to the guardian? It's a rare fantasy novel that explores mother-daughter relationships to this degree, and I'm intrigued by how that's going to play out. Many elements are pulling me into the third book. show less

While the first book of The Broken Earth trilogy, The Fifth Season, followed three parallel stories that turned out to be linked, The Obelisk Gate follows two. At first it seems like there's going to be three, but the third narrative only has two chapters. One plotline follows the protagonist of the first volume, Essun, while the other shows us what her daughter, Nassun, has been doing during the events of both The Fifth Season and this book. (The stories move at different rates, but each ends at the same time, I think.) Just as the multiple narratives of The Fifth Season recontextualized each other, Nassun's story provides extra detail on Essun as a mother, deepening her character in ways not exactly sympathetic, but always show more comprehensible.

I enjoyed this both more and less than The Fifth Season. The Fifth Season was marginally unsatisfying because its main narrative didn't really come to any kind of climax, it felt like it just stopped. The Obelisk Gate definitely has a climax, that delivers on the levels of emotion, plot, character, and backstory-- it's very satisfying. On the other hand, up until that climax, Essun's plotline felt very aimless, as she slowly integrated into her newly adopted comm, but didn't seem to have much of a driving motivation, and her old mentor very slowly doled out exposition. The climax, though, made a lot of this work for me retrospectively. I did very much enjoy Nassun's plotline, though, even if it was clearly subordinate to Essun's (the three plots in The Fifth Season felt more evenly balanced).

Still, on the whole this is an enjoyable read. Jemisin writes great prose, depicts nuanced characters, deals with complicated issues of power and violence, and continues to expand an interesting world. I'm glad Hugo voting led me to The Broken Earth, and I look forward to reading The Stone Sky later this year to see how it all comes to an end. show less

I absolutely loved The Fifth Season when I read it a couple of weeks ago – it made my top five books of 2016 despite reading it in late December.

I’m avoiding spoilers for both The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate in this review, which is going to be a little tricky. At the end of The Fifth Season, we (and Essun) find out a little about what exactly is wrong with the world of the Stillness. The Obelisk Gate picks up pretty much exactly at that ending. We get a couple of new viewpoints – Schaffa, Syenite’s former guardian, and Nassun, Essun’s missing daughter who has been through more in a year that a person should have to bear in a lifetime.

We delve more into the world of the Stillness into this book, Essun isn’t as focused show more on her grief since she’s had some time to process things, and she’s lost Nassun’s trail. Her purpose changes, and she finds a community and starts paying attention to the wider world again. It turns into a more conventional (but still excellent) fantasy story – politics, alliances, defending your home from a threat, figuring out how to save the world. Nassun and Schaffa’s stories explore other plans for the world that are being made in parallel to Essun’s story, but have the potential to establish even more conflict.

This world is utterly brutal, and it’s shaped the people who live in it to be pretty monstrous as well. I’m not usually a fan of protagonists who commit heinous acts, but even though all three protagonists do this multiple times, N.K. Jemisin writes so well that I ended up feeling (almost) nothing but sympathy for them. Broken as they are, they’re the only people with the power to change things, and they’re reasonably well-intentioned. Some of the events makes it easier to understand why people are scared of orogenes, though, and I hope there are going to be some consequences in the third book for them. Right now the main consequences seem to be that the protagonists feel bad about themselves, but that doesn’t stop them from not being in control of themselves later.

Even though this was an outstanding book, it’s still very much a middle book, and by the end, the pieces are in place for what seems like it’s going to be an explosive (in multiple ways) finale. Only about six more months to wait for The Stone Sky! show less

Then it's all broken hands and silver threads woven like ropes, and mothers who move the earth to destroy their enemies but cannot save one little boy.
(Girl.)


This series is so good. So good I tell you. I don't want to give away too much but...B-R with Joanna loves reading...can't wait to dive into the third & final installment.

Imagine a world where one woman isn't one dimensional...and she contains so many selves, she is piecing her fractured soul back together by necessity. Imagine a world in trouble, and who will try to save it but...women. Imagine reading a book where this evolution is so natural and obvious, so painful and trying and so compelling without the force we are used to....Where it's so naturally talented and different show more women working in their own ways and with their own strengths to stop a world-as-you-know-it-ending-season. And it is SO good. show less

This book made me literally nauseous, but I also had trouble stopping.

As with the last book, The Fifth Season, this book is dark. As is trendy these days, it plays with your instincts about good and bad, making the former child abusing asshole into a protector (ish) of children and painting our mc as also a child abuser.

Ultimately nobody in this series is "good" in any traditional way, but the really bad ones made me sick enough to be forced to put the book down.

Still, the author is talented enough that I had to finish. I compromised and got the Audiobook and read at 1.5x which reduced my empathy for any of the characters. It was the only way I could finish.

If you like stories about terrible people being terrible, but occasionally show more surprising you, you may like this story. If you're looking for a fantasy novel to escape into a fantastic place, these books aren't for you. show less

I finished the Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin last night at 3 am and it ripped me in half.

Alabaster is not supposed to die. But their son was also not supposed to die. Tonkee is cool but annoying and needs to be a better listener. The complexities of the relationships and how they are impacted by the war, factions, preconceived ideas, and the fact that these people decided to dig a hole in the ocean and live in there?! Excuse me?!

Also, DIAMOND BONES. How creative can you get? The GORE in this book was so much too. WHO TAKES A BITE OUT OF SOMEONE ELSE’S SKULL? HOW DO YOU SURVIVE THAT?!



Feeling grateful for the moon and having a lot of complex emotions.

Anyone who has not read this is missing out.

With the world coming to an end nowhere is safe, but Essun in her orogene-friendly underground commune and Nessun, fleeing south with the father that just murdered her brother and straight into the arms of a Guardian, have found temporary refuge of a fragile, illusory sort at least. Nessun learns how to use her powers and Essun does the same, particularly in relation to the obelisks and the mysterious, missing moon Alabaster wants her to bring back.

Jemsin teases out the powers and the set-up and the BIG IDEAS in this volume, after the world-building of catastrophe in in volume one, so there's less of a headlong rush and chase and escape, but a slow build of doom and danger. We learn who the narrator is and glimpse what's on the other show more side of the world, and the same style, the slightly detached but compassionate voice depicting Essun's cynicism and rage and Nessun's hardening into a version of her mother for the sake of survival, keep the pages turning quickly. I may have to start that thing of waiting to read multi-volume epics until they're finished purely because the gap in time leaves me unmoored from the narrative for a few chapters until i catch hold again, probably because I am OLD. show less